This invention relates to imaging, and more particularly to the spatial and temporal organization of images and related image data.
Panoramic images have been used for many years to generate both high quality printed images, and immersive images that can be viewed and manipulated through a user interface. Linked panoramic images are available in a variety of formats that allow, for example, a potential homebuyer to do a “virtual walkthrough” of a home through a web-based user interface. Significant limitations exist on the usefulness of such images as currently presented.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,359,617 (Xiong) teaches algorithms for blending rectilinear images into virtual reality panoramas and modifies the images for blending, keeping track of panoramic images that are used to create final image. However, Xiong does not display constituent images in their unmodified form, and does not relate images to their environment. U.S. Pat. No. 6,173,087 (Kumar, et al) teaches a process for alignment of multiple images that does not require distortion-free images. Kumar, et al builds a composite image from multiple images, each of which is warped to fit into a reference coordinate system. Although Kumar, et al teaches producing a distortion free composite of images taken at the same point in time, it does not teach producing composite images from constituent images, each image from the same imaging point, taken at multiple points in time.
Moreover, available systems used for organizing and displaying high-quality panoramic sequences require a significant amount of computation (and, consequently, computer processing run time) in order to generate a composite image from a sequence of images. The resulting blended image suffers loss of detail from contributing images. Such loss of detail hinders generating a good model of the structures shown in the images. Furthermore, current panoramic image viewers cannot provide registered time-sequential images (that is, images taken from the same imaging point or what is referred to as “perspective”) at times that differ by days, months, or years.
What is needed is a system capable of registering multiple images where each image shares the same perspective and each image was created at a different time. What is also needed is the ability to overlay such time distinct images to record observable changes over time. Further needed is the ability to relate images into a panoramic schema while preserving the relationship between the images and the scene of interest, i.e. the neighborhood surrounding the image or images. Further needed is a dynamic user interface display means enabling users to rapidly access images, visually relate the image to its surrounding environment, move around the neighborhood and access portions of the same or different images—even images from different imaging techniques- and images taken at different times, provided any image is registerable with (taken from the same perspective) as an image desired to be viewed on the user display interface at the same time.